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Two big-gun poets are out with books this summer: A sixth collection for Betty Adcock, who teaches in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and a fifth for Alan Michael Parker, director of creative writing at Davidson and a faculty member of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte.

Emerson tells us the “poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low and plain that the common influences should delight him.”

I asked both Adcock and Parker how they manage to keep life “low and plain.”

“Poems can't flourish in hurry and noise,” says Adcock, whose most recent collection includes, “Poem to a Friend Explaining Why I Did Not / Attend the Convention of Professional Poets.”

Adcock tells me that she is not connected to the Internet and would “rather write a long letter than answer multiple e-mails, would rather look in books for information than be over-informed by Google.”

Further, she says, she belongs to few organizations and is active in none.

“I rarely attend conventions of writers or conferences. I do not e-mail,” she says.

As for Parker, “I am a poet who works out of pleasure rather than pain.”

What's more, he says, “for invention to percolate in me, I need a clear mind and a quiet room. I've learned that as the events of my life become more deliberate, the work seems to become more adventurous.”

Parkers shares this maxim with his students: “Quit one activity each year, something you do (perhaps even well) that matters not as much.”

Adcock adds that she likes to cook, to read deeply (not on a screen) and “to be still in my backyard.”

And she points out that Emerson is male and uses the male pronoun in referring to “the poet.”